


The Children's Crusade

by nicasio_silang



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:04:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicasio_silang/pseuds/nicasio_silang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She walks steadily, she clutches at the rifle, she looks for a flash of white among the gloom. He’s here. She’s sure of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Children's Crusade

8.

Light fails. Claire navigates by whim and the direction of the breeze. The shapes of trees flatten to a dark tangle, the dense pelt of the forest. Cold air bites her cheeks, but there’s strength yet in her body. She walks steadily, she clutches at the rifle, she looks for a flash of white among the gloom. He’s here. She’s sure of it.

She talks to him as she goes. Her voice empties out in gusts.

“You know, the worst part is that I actually sort of liked it here.” There’s a hushing to her left and she turns to follow it. “It’s nothing special, but I hated Wyoming. This was pretty good. School was okay. The people were, you know, they were kind of hicks, but they were okay. Mom was doing alright. And, stupid me, I thought...” Her teeth grind together. “I thought, _maybe this time._ ”

Near. He must be nearby now. Her blood runs hot in her veins. He’s got to be here.

“It’s not asking for much,” she says. “I mean, I used to want a lot more from you. To go home. I wanted you to fix it. Both of them. I don’t need that anymore.” There’s a break in the trees, then a clearing lit in muddled moonlight. There’s a white-tailed buck standing in the low grass. Its dark eye is on her; its antlers branch tall into knife-points. “I don’t even remember that family,” she tells it. “I don’t need them.”

She draws closer. The buck doesn’t move.

 

7.

Jolene is scuttling away on her back, pushing through the dirt with her heels and palms. She hits a shallow puddle and cries out.

“Shh,” says Claire. “He’ll hear you.”

 

6.

Blood on dead leaves looks natural. The palette of rust, copper, decay, as if rain comes down red every autumn. Tony’s hair, cardboard brown, his pale pallor, and his curled fingers. He’s like a tree blown over in a storm, dropped and scattered into weird shapes. Claire would like to drop the gun.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she says. A dry gust of wind reaches for her cheek. She turns her back to it. “It would have been fine. I can take care of myself. And now it’s all...”

There’s a crack in the distance, the sound of someone pushing through brittle branches. The rifle is in her hand.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone,” Claire says. “I can take care of myself.”

She follows the noise of running.

 

5.

Claire watches from the platform above them. They’re not her friends. She had friends in Kalamazoo, a friend in Arlington, and she had three in Coeur d’Alene. She had a bitterness in Gilette, in her guts. Here she has these kids who don’t know the first thing about her. So there’s no use explaining.

Nate dangles upside-down below her. His shirt slips down his body and covers his mouth. The skin of his belly is pale, there’s a pink dent from his belt, pink lines on his ribs like cat scratches. He’s swinging from the rope ladder. His shoe is slipping off. His body will fall soon. Jolene is looking up at Claire. Tony is on his knees, retching.

“The fuck,” Tony says. “What the fuck.”

Jolene says, “We gotta call an ambulance.”

“There’s no signal out here,” says Claire. She turns and steps onto the top rung of the ladder. Nate’s weight shakes it. She jumps down the rest of the way, her cheek rasping on his jacket. When she lands, she’s facing him. His head is juddering around loose from his spine. His hair hangs down off his skull in clumps. When Claire turns around, she’s holding the gun.

“You psycho bitch.”

Jolene puts her hand on his shoulder, says, “Tony.” He keeps talking.

“I knew you were a freak, but what the _fuck_.” He climbs to his feet. Jolene grabs at his sleeve.

“It was an accident, right? Claire? Yeah? We just gotta. We gotta tell someone, and they’ll, oh, oh.” She breaks off in a shriek. Nate’s body’s dropped to the ground. There’s a crackle-- he’s crushed an empty beer can.

“You should go,” Claire tells them. “He doesn’t like loose ends.”

Jolene starts walking away, but Tony keeps calling her names, he won’t shut up. He won’t-

 

4.

The top of the rope ladder is sitting in a clump on the lip of the floor. She hadn’t put it there, Nate hadn’t put it there. Birdsong filters through the mesh camouflage curtains.

“Let’s just go back into town,” Nate says. He stands up. She stands up. “You need help, Claire.”

He needs her help. She reaches for his heart, but he backs away. His foot catches in the rope. There’s a fall and a snap.

 

3.

Tony and Jolene climb down to get more beer. It’s close inside the tree stand, dark and warm, and it smells like their sweat and their breath. Claire sits on one side, Nate on the other. Their shoes nearly touch in the middle. She taps the unopened top of a can with her fingernail, he unzips his jacket and slides it off.

“Have you ever actually shot a deer before?” she asks.

But he says on her heels, “My mom left too. I mean, you know.”

She rolls her beer to him across the floor, shrugs, “Don’t want it. So you haven’t?”

“Fuck yeah, I have.” A grandiose shrug.

“You killed it?”

“Okay, well, I shot at one. It saw me before I got the shot off, though, I stepped on a stick or something.” He cracks open the can. Fizz runs over his fingers. “Hey, I didn’t mean to, you know, I’m just saying. I know it makes shit weird for a while.” He licks his thumb, catches her eye. “How long’s he been gone?”

She’s tried this conversation many ways. She never lies. She says, _Years_ , or _Days_ , or _He’s still around_ , or she tells them _It’s not like that. We left_ him.

She tells Nate, “You don’t have anything in common with me.”

His beer is still foaming out onto his hand. He frowns at it, he frowns at her.

“Fine. You wanna be a bitch, be a bitch. I’m just making a fucking effort here.”

She arranges her features until they look contrite. She does feel contrite. He’s just some kid, and he brought her out here. Through the open door she can see the branches shaking, hear Jolene hitting on Tony. The sun’s already low. The light that hits the tips of their toes has gone a hard gold.

“Why’d your mom leave?”

“She was cheating,” he says. “Fell in love with some guy. Your dad?”

“Yeah. Yeah, same sorta thing. Are you supposed to shoot the deer in the head?”

“No.” He taps two fingers to his chest. “Heart.” She nods.

“That makes sense.”

“Do you ever see him? I mean, where’d you move from? My mom went down to Ann Arbor with her, whatever, with Jeff.” He folds his legs and the floorboards creak.

“All the time,” she says. Outside, at eye level, a red squirrel pauses on the tip of a branch. Still as the grave, fox ears and quiet eyes. “He follows me. Or I follow him.”

“You mean he lives here? Like in Cadillac?”

“He’s somewhere.” The rifle’s on the floor between them. She fingers the barrel. “Right in the heart, huh?”

 

2.

“Almost there,” Nate tosses over his shoulder. He’s got an eye on Claire, has had for months, that’s the reason she’s allowed to come along. She eyes him back, quiet.

She’d prefer to be alone out here, the shush of the leaves underfoot, the clattering of wind in bare branches, the chill in the air scraping past her cheeks.

There’s a tree house up ahead. _Tree stand_ , Nate insists. Jolene snickers. It’s about fifteen feet off the ground, barely large enough for all of them to fit inside, precarious. There’s a rope ladder. They set the cooler on the ground and tuck two cans each into their coat pockets. Climbing the rope means feet kicking high at an odd angle, feeling like falling the whole way, dragging the house down. Claire climbs up last.

 

1.

Late autumn in Michigan. Yellow birch and slippery elm. Prickly gooseberry bushes clinging to her sleeves as she brushes past them. The smell of smoke, but nothing’s on fire. It’s her junior year of high school; it’s her first autumn in Michigan. Claire, Jolene, Tony, and Nate, all outfitted in day-glo orange and inappropriate shoes, carrying an unloaded rifle and four six-packs of cheap beer into the forest in honor of hunting season. 

The guys lug a cooler full of cans between them. Claire offered to carry the gun. It’s a thin, cold weight against her shoulder, the box of cartridges tinkling heavy in her purse, slap-slapping her thigh as they go.

Jolene dawdles, urges Claire to hang back, do the girl thing, but Claire pretends not to understand. She’s got no need for teenage schoolyard politics, she’s got no illusions about their intentions to actually hunt, but she’s looking anyway, through the trunks and down into the ravines, looking for the deer.

Two days ago, her mother put her foot down to this idea.

“He’s got a license. I’m just coming along, he’s not gonna let me shoot anything.”

“His father has a hunting license. Nate barely has a driver’s license.”

“And his dad will be there the whole time.”

“Yeah. Yes, so you say.”

“You want to call him?” Claire holds out the phone. The trump card. “Call him.”

She’d seen her mother speak to another human being exactly once that week. It was at the supermarket. She’d said, _Plastic, please._

So now she’s got a rifle over her shoulder, she’s in the forest 25 miles outside of Cadillac, she can hear the breeze chatter in the trees and the fall leaves crumple underfoot, Jolene struggling to make conversation, the boys prattling about Halo, and somewhere in the woods is a white-tailed deer. She’s gonna kill it herself.


End file.
